


Held So Dear

by zeldadestry



Category: The Painted Veil
Genre: Community: 100_women, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-08
Updated: 2008-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:29:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was not the words that made them one, it was not the ceremony, it is only the look in her eyes when she sees him now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Held So Dear

**Author's Note:**

> written for zephyr for the 2008 yuletide exchange  
> prompt 096, 'memories', 100_women fanfic challenge

Some nights she dreams the saline arrives in time.

She dreams that when his voice wakes her she sees the face she loves and not its death mask.

Sometimes she swears to herself, swears that it would have been better, so much better, if Charlie had agreed to marry her. For then, though she and Walter would still be apart, at least he would be alive.

But she wouldn’t have known him. She wouldn’t have truly known Walter, then, not as she grew to know him in the weeks just before his death. He never would have known her.

Sometimes she feels his hand at her back.

Sometimes she and Doris sit together at their parents’ home and, if she is at the piano, she can pretend nothing has changed. But she doesn’t really want to go back. Yes, Walter was alive then, but she did not know him. She was still learning him when he died, she was learning the details of him. The contours are indelibly part of her now, she wears them as her own.

“I know how difficult this is for you,” her sister sometimes says when they hug good bye. “Tell me, please tell me, if there’s anything I can do.”

But the hardest part is over. Sometimes she thinks the worst part was only, well, when? What was it?

Was it being woken in the night and told by Waddington that Walter had taken ill? Was it the ride to the refuge camp? For once she was at his side, once she was with him, she had to help him, take care of him, that was the sole focus inside her.

Perhaps it was when she cried outside Walter’s bathroom, when she was absolutely convinced that she had ruined not only their marriage, but any chance either of them would ever have for happiness. It was hard to cry alone, and fear that she would only ever cry alone from then on. “No,” Walter had said, afterwards. “I heard your sobs, Kitty, and I was sorry they came from what I had said. I would have gone to you, held you, if I were a braver man.” Crying is nothing, crying alone is the horror.

Perhaps it was the next to last moment, when she lit the lamp at his bedside, fully believing all was well, and saw that all was ended. But that was only the next to last moment. In the last moment, his eyes were on hers before he was gone. How emaciated he had looked, a ghost of himself, yet she would always recognize his eyes, his voice as he said her name. His eyes and how kind they were when he came to check on her after she had fainted and was resting, his gentle hands as they touched her to make sure she had no fever, so much of it all is painful to recall but her life would be meaningless without each of those moments. Sometimes the pain reminds her of what she had, if only for a while.

When her belly grows large the anxiety over the baby’s father stays with her, until she chooses to let it go. “It doesn’t matter now,” those were Walter’s words to her, and she must trust them. It doesn’t matter now. They were together, in that moment, both of them committed to each other and to whatever was to come.

Sometimes when she takes her tea she turns round, as though she hears Amah sweep the broom. She pictures the orphanage, the children singing, and wonders who plays the piano for them now.

Sometimes she whispers the words out loud: I’m sorry, Walter. I miss you. I love you.

  
She had never dared ask herself before what gave meaning. She had always assumed it was something that would be granted to her, bestowed upon her, and not found through her own actions. She had expected love to work the same way.

Sometimes she remembered their wedding night, wondered what it could have been if they’d both more experience or if they’d been able to be truly naked with each other. Had he constricting ideas of what a man and husband ought to be? Of course. She’d ideas, too. At times, Charles had seemed the ideal of a man. But what was the value of passion when it did not coincide, coexist, with loyalty? When she thought of Charles her cheeks burned, but no longer with desire. She was embarrassed because what she had hoped to be mutual was not. Why did she never ask herself why Charlie was so good in bed? He was a good fuck because he’d done so much fucking but she couldn’t admit that. She’d been fool enough to believe it was love that made it so good. How easy it had been to pretend that Charlie must be missing her as much as she was missing him but when she knew she was but one link of a very long chain, when she caught on to what Waddington implied, she surrendered. She severed him from her heart. Perhaps Charles had loved her, in his own way, but with no strength or purpose behind it.

She was hesitant to touch Walter, he made it so clear he needed distance, and yet at times she felt him watching her. One evening, after they had begun to talk to each other again, she caught sight of him in her mirror. He was standing in the doorway, watching as she brushed her hair. He frowned when he realized she’d noticed him, averted his gaze but did not leave. “Do you begrudge me my vanity?” she said, wishing to slap him, kiss him.

“No. I was wondering if you ever feel as though the face in the mirror is someone else’s, rather than your own.”

She put down her brush. “That’s a poetic notion. And yes, I have, once or twice.” He nodded, then turned to go. “Wait!” She cried. “Do you sometimes imagine I am another woman, different underneath my skin, the wife you wanted?”

He was still, but kept his back to her. “Perhaps I did. But I do so no longer,” and with that he walked away, leaving her in wonder.

It was lonely to live with a man who did not touch her, who refused her touch. Sometimes at night she touched herself, and when she came she wanted Walter to hear. One day at breakfast he dared to ask, “Do you ever dream of Townsend?”

“Never,” she replied, “and I doubt he dreams of me. He has a new girl, I’m sure.”

“He may have a new girl, as you say, but I doubt he could so easily forget you. Forsake you, perhaps, but not forget.”

“Walter! Is that a compliment?” She peered curiously at him.

“Take it as one, if you like. I’m sure others would call it a curse,” he said, and left her.

That night she heard his own stifled cry, not long after hers. She lay in bed, hot all over, wondered if he might come to her, wondered if he knew she wished for exactly that. She was his wife, for whatever that was worth, and she imagined laying her body over him, covering his mouth with her own. What would he taste like now that she wanted him so badly? What noises might he be free to make, when he knew she wanted it, wanted him? What might he say to her, whisper in her ear when he was inside her? “Love me again,” she whispered into the humid air around her. “No, no, love me for the first time. Love me as the Kitty I am. Can you, Walter? Will you?”

Perhaps it was a prayer for the very next night he did, and she knew he did.

The night after their reunion, she put her arms around his shoulders as he sat in front of his work. Her hands crossed over his heart, and when his own hand came up to gently stroke the sensitive inside of her arm, back and forth, back and forth, she let her eyes fall shut. “Will you come to bed?” she murmured.

“Are you tired already?” he wondered.

“Walter!” She laughed, pulled away from him and walked around to the front of his chair so that she could sit in his lap. He looked curiously at her, his scientific mind always at work. “Can’t you guess what a wife means when she asks her husband to put down his work, put out the light, and come to bed?”

His eyes were not on her own, but down to her thighs, which she let fall open. He placed his hand between them, kissed her before lifting her up and carrying her to her bed. She guided him to lie on his back, she straddled him as she had Charlie, that day that seemed centuries ago, that afternoon when Walter caught them, when he knew. Everything was different now. She didn’t even want to come, didn’t want him to come, she just wanted to stay in the moment forever, his thumb at her lips, his eyelids falling as he was lost to her, lost, she knew, in how good it felt. And she moved above him, looked down on him, her fingers interlaced with his. He groaned when he finished, and she moaned, too, just to be together with him in all of it.

In bed, in the morning, when he tried to get away without waking her, her hands reached out for him.

“Walter,” she pleaded. “Stay.” And he did, and she wrapped her body around his own, her arms circled him, her leg thrown over his, her lips at his neck. “Stay with me,” she whispered. “Don’t hide from me. Let me see you, all of you.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes. Wouldn’t you like to see me?” she asked, and she rolled over onto her back, touched herself as she had when she first arrived there, heartbroken and lonely in the night, missing Charlie and then wanting Walter, missing Walter because she wondered if she’d ever have him again and hating herself for not loving him when she had the chance. And Walter watched her in awe, kissed her breasts, her mouth, as she fingered herself, ran his hands up and down the insides of her thighs. “Lie back,” she ordered after she’d finished, once she had caught her breath. “Give yourself to me.” It thrilled her to have his body spread out before her. How vulnerable he was underneath her, and how much she wanted to prove he could trust her. And she used her hands, stroking and cupping, she used her mouth, kissing and sucking and licking. And all she did was for him, her whole body caressed his, all for his pleasure, until he came in her mouth and she swallowed it down, hot and salt. And yet when she had finished, when he had finished, when she brought her face up beside his own, there was a fear in his eyes and a question, and she knew he was wondering if she had done for Charlie what she had just done for him. “Don’t think of it,” she begged. “Please, Walter, don’t. We’ll have so many happy years together, so many years when I’m all yours, so many days like this one. Please, let’s only look forward now.”

He looked smug as he dressed and she liked it, because there was nothing smug about Walter, not really. Even when he pretended superiority, he never really believed it, never really believed in himself. There was almost a swagger as he walked to the door and she loved him for it and loved herself for giving it to him. “Don’t you dare tell the nuns what’s put such a smile on your face,” she teased him.

He laughed. “The mother superior would never look at you the same way.” She kissed him at the door and when she pulled her lips apart from his, still his hands were reluctant to release her.

“May I state the obvious?”

“Please.”

“You’d rather not leave me, darling.” She liked it when he called her that, called him it herself, hoping to hear it echoed back.

“It’s quite a good thing we weren’t reconciled before now.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’m sorely tempted to stay here with you all day and never leave your bed. I’m not a strong enough man to resist you. And then what would the town have done for fresh water?”

  
It was just two mornings ago that she followed him when he got out of bed, brought him back to her. He held her up, she wrapped her legs around him, her back was against the wall and he was inside her, he was naked and she was still in her nightgown and he watched her, kissed her breasts, watched her again, nothing was as beautiful as her face, her eyes closed, she almost looked like she could be in pain, but he knew it was because it was good, because it was the pain of wanting to come, the tension of being so close. He stilled his hips so he could be aware of hers, just her thrusting, rocking, against him. “Oh, Walter,” she said, and moved faster, stronger, and he joined her again, deeper and deeper inside her. He felt her grip on his shoulder tighten, her nails cutting into his skin. “Oh, god,” she said, and she was panting against him, her back arching, and then she moaned. His eyes fell shut, he thrust harder, harder, as she whispered in his ear, urging him on, telling him he’s the only one she wants, begging him to make her his, over and over. “Almost,” he told her, “almost, almost, so close,” and then he could feel the rush and he was there. His hips stilled and his whole body was caught up in the spasm, clenching and surrendering in turn. Everything was perfect, perfect. He slid out of her, lifted her up in his arms and carried her over to the bed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it into work,” he complained, collapsing beside her as she laughed.

“Stay in bed with me all day!”

“Someday,” he promised. “Someday soon.” He brushed her hair away from her cheek. “I should have bought you a piano.”

She played her fingertips over his ribs. “It’s alright,” she said. “I have one at the convent, now.”

“When we return to Shanghai, you’ll have your own.”

“I’d like that.”

“I know.”

She knew he must go, in fact she was expected later in the day as well, but she danced around him as he washed and dressed, taunting him, teasing him, kissing him every chance she got. “Stay with me, stay with me,” she chanted. “Walter, my love, my dearest, don’t leave me all alone.” She skimmed a hand over her belly. “Stay with me and the little one.”  
He let his hand follow the path of her own. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

“To know we’re going to have a baby? Yes.”

“Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?”

“No idea. Son or daughter, I know you’ll spoil them. They’ll love daddy more than mommy.”

“You only say that because you preferred your own father.”

“I prefer you.”

“Do you now? Prefer me to whom?”

“Everyone,” she insisted, and rested her head on his shoulder.

  
He knows if she were to wake right now, her words would be the same. Stay with me, she would beg him, plead, stay with me, please, Walter, don’t leave me, I love you.

Alone, at his desk, he has spent so many hours. For so long he has looked through the microscope. He has looked with the scientist’s eye towards dissection, taking it apart, breaking it down. Up close, closer, to each detail, searching for and finding the causes of illness and disease. But it was easy to do that. He knows it now. He had hated her for what he saw as her incapacity to love, her horrific shallowness, never understanding that he did not understand the truth. Love is mutual, separate from the lover and the beloved. Their marriage exists between the two of them, owned by neither, shared and held by both.

She has the most beautiful face, and all that is in her shines through. It is her eyes, it is everything she expresses through them. How beautiful she is when she looks at him, now that she knows him, now that she loves him. How much he had hated Townsend, suspecting how she must look upon him. Maybe he did not dare break down the door because what he could not bear to see was the look, the look reserved by her for Charlie. And yet if he remembered it right, he could have had that look for himself. She had asked him to leave the light on. Why had he, who looked so close, who studied and researched, why could he not understand the meaning of it? How was she to know him if everything were to be done in the dark? How was she to know him when he would not speak unless necessary? So strange now to think that he could have honestly been what he was, flawed, inexperienced, hesitant, and she might have even loved him for it. Instead he had let her be intimidated, he had held himself above her and always been so damn concerned with impressing her.

Someone had to die. He is not a devout man but he knew what he did was a sin. He had wished to punish her, so there will be a punishment in return and he is only glad the death will be his own.

She’s coming down the stairs, perpetually, she’s bringing herself down to his reach, to his sight. He’s gazing up at her as she comes down the stairs, and he did not know her then, though he imagined that he did. He saw her and he imagined his flat in Shanghai utterly transformed. Had he loved her like a doll, then? No, he had hoped she’d like Shanghai, he’d told her as much, surrounded by flowers in the shop, and maybe he loved her like a flower, not understanding that she would voice her own needs and wants, that he could not expect to know what they were before she told him.

She wanted to be seen, she wanted the lights on, but he was too shy.

“I’ve been afraid of you,” she said.

She can not be afraid of him anymore. The end is in sight, but he finds he does not fear it.  
What has he had in these last few days that he has never had before? He is too weak to move, but he can see her body rise and fall with her breath. She rests her face upon his heart, what will she find there?

He has tasted her, her lips have kissed all of him as he has tasted all of her.

How did he know she loved him? It was how she held him after she told him about the baby, he could feel how she gave everything over to him, gave herself over, and he held on.

He has to let go and he will, he has no use for himself any longer, but how can he let go of her? He begins to see visions and though at first he fights them, like a man pretending he’s less drunk than he is, eventually he gives in to their intoxication.

He sees her in London, he sees her at that same flower shop where he proposed, holding nothing but his need for her, his want.

Kitty is back in London, holding the hand of a little boy.

Whose child? He does not care, it does not matter. The boy is already consecrated theirs. He was to be their son, he will always be their son. He was not Kitty’s husband, but he has become hers, now. She will be a mother, she is a mother, she will go on without him and he wants her to do so.

They will bury him in the morning. She will not cry, then, not yet. He knows she will cry many times in the years to follow. He knows and he can only hope that her tears will be proof that they shared this connection, this time together, that they have each loved and been loved in return. He hopes that in time all the tears will symbolize is the immortal twining of grief and gratitude. If he could spare the strength to speak, he would tell her. If we did not hold it so dear, how could we miss it so much?

She will travel the Yangtze back to Shanghai, she will set sail for London.

She will wear the ring only for as long as she needs it, for he does not ask that she remain ever his bride. It was not the words that made them one, it was not the ceremony, it is only the look in her eyes when she sees him now. That was why he could not wake her when he left for the refuge camp. He knew that he could not leave her, not when she looked at him like that.

She is back in London, she is wearing a hat and when the little boy pulls at her hand she smiles down at him.

He will break down into molecules, the bacteria will feast on him, after this is through. He may have studied them, but he could not change them, they are necessary. They live to bring all matter back into soil, earth.

It will be soon.

Her body rests atop his own, her cheek presses against his breast.

He believes, not as the nuns do, he believes with his own fervor, that he must leave this world as he entered it, new.

He must know she forgives him. That is all he needs.

He says her name, he says her name.

He asks.

She says there is nothing to forgive.

If there is nothing to forgive, then he is as he wished. He is new, naked, empty as the day he came into this world. The slate is wiped clean, all the ink has washed away. There is nothing written, there are no more words needed.

Will he see her again? He does not even need to ask the question. He feels her beside him, now.

They are together now and that is all.  



End file.
